Sunday, 29 January 2017

Thought for the day:"I fell backward through a window earlier - Pane in the bum."

Today is the anniversary of the Cleveland Elementary School shooting which took place on this date in 1979. Brenda Ann Spencer still sits in Jail, some say correctly..

Brenda Spencer (born April 3, 1962) lived in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego, California, in a house across the street from Grover Cleveland Elementary School, San Diego Unified School District.

Aged 16, she was 5'2" (157 cm) and had bright red hair. She is said to have self-identified as "having been gay from birth." After her parents separated, she lived with her father, Wallace Spencer, in virtual poverty; they slept on a single mattress on the living room floor, with empty alcohol bottles throughout the house.

Acquaintances said Spencer expressed hostility toward policemen, had talked about shooting one, and had talked of doing something big to get on TV.

Although Spencer showed exceptional ability in photography, winning first prize in a Humane Society competition, she was generally uninterested in school; one teacher recalled frequently inquiring if she was awake in class. Later, during tests while she was in custody, it was discovered Spencer had an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain.

It was attributed to an accident on her bicycle. In early 1978, staff at a facility for problem pupils, to which Spencer had been referred for truancy, informed her parents that she was suicidal.

That summer, Spencer, who was known to hunt birds in the neighborhood, was arrested for shooting out the windows of Cleveland Elementary with a BB gun, and burglary.

In December, a psychiatric evaluation arranged by her probation officer recommended Spencer be admitted to a mental hospital for depression, but her father refused to give permission.

For Christmas 1978, he gave her a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle with a telescopic sight and 500 rounds of ammunition.

Spencer later said, "I asked for a radio and he bought me a gun." When asked why he might have done that, she answered, "I felt like he wanted me to kill myself."

Brenda Ann Spencer

“With every school shooting, I feel I’m partially
responsible,” Brenda Ann Spencer told the parole board back in 2001.
“What if they got the idea from what I did?”

Spencer
was 16 on Jan. 29, 1979, when she opened fire with a .22 rifle on
Grover Cleveland Elementary School across from her home in San Diego,
killing the principal and the custodian while wounding eight youngsters
and a police officer.

“I don’t like Mondays,” she famously replied when asked her motive.

Spencer has since said she does not remember making the remark that inspired a song by the Boomtown Rats
and became a kind of anthem for many of the school shooters who
followed. She has said she also does not recall telling a cop, “It was a
lot of fun seeing children shot.”

During a 2009 parole hearing, her most recent, she insisted that she had not intended to shoot anybody.

“So, why did you commit this crime?” the head parole commissioner asked.

“Because I wanted to die,” she said. “I was trying to commit suicide.”

“Why pick the school across the street?” the commissioner asked.

“Because I knew that if I fired on the school the
police would show up, and they would shoot me and kill me,” she said.
“And every time I had tried suicide in the previous year I had screwed
it up.”

“Why did you have to shoot the people at the school?” the commissioner asked.

“I wasn’t specifically aiming at people,” she said. “I was shooting into the parking lot.”

The commissioner inquired how many rounds she had fired, and she said she did not recall.

“Well,
that’s pretty good shooting to hit as many folks as you did if you’re
not trying to hit anybody from across the street,” the commissioner
noted.

“I don’t remember aiming at anybody,” Spencer insisted.

“Do you remember them taking cover?” the commissioner asked.

“Vaguely,” she said.

The commissioner asked if she remembered the police coming, and she said she did.

The commissioner observed that Spencer had described a dark side to her father, while others described him as a decent man.

“He liked to keep appearances up, that everything was fine in the house,” Spencer now said.

“What about your mother?” the commissioner asked.

“She just wasn’t there,” Spencer said.

“But your father was always there.”

“Yeah.”

“And apparently you two slept in the same bed?”

“Yes.”

She
had submitted a written statement in which she alleged that her father
had begun fondling her when she was 9 and had sexually assaulted her
virtually every night.

The commissioner said they would get back to all that. He returned to the shooting.

“You didn’t go to school that day?” the commissioner asked.

“No, I wasn’t feeling good,” she replied.

She said she had been under the influence of alcohol, pot, and downers.

“They made me numb so I didn’t feel anything,” she said.

She confirmed that she had heard the kids in the school across the street.

“A lot of kids laughing and doing their thing?” the commissioner asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Did that upset you?”

“No.”

“It didn’t upset you that they seemed to have happier lives?”

“No,” she said. “I was just set on committing suicide.”

“I
am sorry you had to go through everything you went through, but what
I’m trying to do is find out why you would open fire and kill two people
and hurt so many others,” the commissioner said. “You indicate you
weren’t really trying to hit anybody—but you did a heck of a job of
hitting a lot of people.”

“The only thing I was concentrating on was getting the police there so that they could shoot me,” she said.

“Well, you could have shot out one window of the school and the police would have come.”

“I didn’t think that.”

“You didn’t have any anger at the children?”

“No.”

“You weren’t trying to hit anybody?”

“Not that I remember.”

The commissioner asked if she recalled saying she had fired on the schoolyard because “I don’t like Mondays.”

“I might have said that,” she replied. “It would have been the drugs and the alcohol talking.”

The
commissioner quoted the police negotiator’s report, which said she had
told him, ”It was fun to watch the children that had red and blue ski
jackets on, as they made perfect targets.” The negotiator added that she
told him she “liked to watch them squirm around after they had been
shot.”

“It’s entirely possible I said that,” Spencer told the parole board.

“Do you have any idea why you’d go out of your way to harm so many innocent people?” the commissioner asked

“I didn’t consider that other people would get hurt,” she said. “I didn’t think it all the way through”

“Several
children were injured by gunshot wounds. The principal of the
elementary school, Burton Wragg, age 53, had gone to the aid of the
students and was subsequently shot himself,” the commissioner said.
“Michael Suchar, age 56, school custodian, went to the aid of Mr. Wragg
and was also shot.”

“Uh-hmm,” Spencer said.

“You’re
shooting people as they come to the aid of others,” he said. “You’re
shooting these people as they become targets, and yet you told me that
you didn’t intend to hit anyone.”

“No,” she said.

“Are you pretty good with a rifle?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I guess.”

She was asked if any adults had seen danger signs before the shooting.

“A month before I was arrested, my [high school] counselor took me to see a psychiatrist,” she reported.

She said the psychiatrist had recommended she be hospitalized as a danger to herself and to others.

“My dad told them that nothing was wrong with me and everything was fine, and leave us alone,” she recalled.

That had been just before Christmas. She had asked her father for a radio.

“I don’t know why he bought me a gun,” she said.

The
San Diego District Attorney’s Office sent a representative to the
hearing. He informed the board that on the Saturday before the shooting
Spencer had told another teen that something big was going to happen on
Monday that would be on TV and radio.

“On
Monday morning, January 29th, she asked her father if she could stay
home from school because she didn’t feel well,” the deputy district
attorney reported. “Her father left home for work around 7 o’clock in
the morning. Then the inmate proceeded to commit one of the most
notorious crimes in the history of this nation.”

He
went on: “At 8:30 a.m., the children were lining up to enter Cleveland
Elementary School… She picked up her .22 caliber, semiautomatic scoped
rifle and began shooting children. Principal Burton Wragg heard the
shooting and ran out to get the children out of harm’s way, and the
inmate shot him in the chest and killed him. The head custodian, Michael
Suchar, known as ‘Mr. Mike’ to the children, ran to Mr. Wragg’s aid,
and the inmate shot him in the chest and killed him. She shot eight
children, and she shot a responding police officer, Robert Robb, in the
neck. But for the heroic efforts of a police officer who risked his life
to drive a trash truck in front of her residence to block her field of
fire, no doubt further children would have been shot.”

The
D.A. representative added that Spencer had complained to the police
negotiator that the custodian had tried to get everybody off the school
grounds.

“She shot him because, by her own
words, he was making it more difficult for her to shoot the kids,” the
representative said. “The number of shots fired and the number of vital
hits speaks of incredibly accurate, directed shooting, and these were
moving targets.”

The representative
further reported that blood and urine samples taken after Spencer’s
arrest tested clean. He concluded that no drugs or alcohol had been
talking when she said she just didn’t like Mondays.

“Basically, what she’s telling this board are a series of untruths,” the representative concluded.

A
lawyer representing Spencer spoke next. He suggested that the testing
of the time may have simply failed to detect the intoxicants. He allowed
that Spencer’s father had never “owned up” to sexually abusing her. But
the lawyer also noted that while visiting Spencer at a
juvenile-detention facility after her arrest, the father had met a girl
who resembled his daughter, but was younger.

“[The father] then went on and had a sexual relationship with her and married her,” the lawyer alleged.

The
commissioner read into the record several victim-impact statements. One
was from Wilfred Suchar, son of the murdered custodian, Michael Suchar.
He said his wife had heard on the radio of a shooting at the school and
called him at work. He had gone to his parent’s home to tell his
mother, Valentina.

“We found her singing
as she gardened in the backyard,” the son recalled. “We were all very
upset and shocked on the way to the hospital, because no one would tell
us Michael’s condition. When we arrived, we found him not in the
hospital room, but down in the basement, dead. He had died trying to
help the children and Principal Wragg, killed by Ms. Spencer trying to
liven up her Monday.”

He said that his mother never recovered.

“She
was lonely and scared, and became more and more depressed,” he said.
“There didn’t seem much I or the rest of the family could do to help
her.”

He went on to say that his father “had gotten
out alive from some rough times in the Pacific during World War II. He
was then a part of the Allied occupying forces in northern Germany. Here
he met his wife-to-be, Valentina. She, because of the language and
cultural differences in the United States, always counted on him to
manage their affairs. Suddenly, he was gone. I think her premature death
in 1991 was at least partly the result of this traumatic experience.”

He
ended by saying on behalf of his deceased parents and the surviving
members of the family that they opposed parole for Spencer.

“My question is, will there be another boring Monday for her?” he asked.

The
custodian’s brother, Andrew Suchar also submitted a statement, noting
that Michael had survived two ship sinkings during the war only to be
killed by a 16-year-old in a schoolyard. The brother said that although
his widowed sister-in-law lived until 1991, “her life actually ended in
January 1979. The victims are not only those killed, but the survivors
who live the tragedy for the rest of their lives.”

And then there was a statement by Steve Wragg, son of Principal Burton Wragg.

“My
dad and Mike were the only two to die that day,” he said, “The kids
that they were trying to save all lived. Some of them were seriously
injured, but all survived. I hope that somehow my dad and Mike know
this.”

There was also a statement from the principal’s daughter.

“People
have told me that I look like him, act like him, that my kids are the
spitting image of him,” she said. “When the kids hear this, they can’t
possibly relate to such statements, because they have never met their
grandfather, and they know they never will, because I’ve told them over
and over again that he is dead, that he was murdered by Brenda Spencer.”

The daughter spoke of scattering her father’s ashes in the desert.

“The
place he loved the most. The small ceremony solidified my understanding
of love and eternity, and of our ties to one another as human beings.
Yet, while it was all happening, so beautiful, so serene, I couldn’t get
over the perverse violence associated with my dad’s passing. I still
can’t.”

She described going to the school to collect her father’s personal effects.

“The
blood hadn’t been scrubbed from where he had fallen on the concrete. I
walked around this place, not stepping on the splotches and the puddles,
and didn’t want to be hugged by anyone. Nothing can console me ever.”

She then spoke words that have gained ever more truth after ever more mass shootings.

“A person can be attending school and be gunned down.”

She added, “It happened here first.”

Other statements came from children now grown.

“My name is Crystal Hardy,” one began. “I was 10 years old when I was shot by Brenda Spencer.”

She
described arriving at school and hearing shots and seeing the principal
and the custodian lying dead. A teacher had called for her to duck.

“But I wasn’t able to run from the bullet Brenda had for me,” Hardy said.

She recalled lying in the nurse’s office, bleeding as bullets crashed through the window.

“I
was greatly comforted when the policemen arrived to carry me away. I
can still remember the pool of blood on the nurse’s bed, and the terror
didn’t end there. Later, of course, I had nightmares, and to this day I
fear that someone is pointing a gun at me when I’m walking in open
places.”

“And recently, my boyfriend
wanted me to go to a shooting range with him because it’s a sport he
enjoys, and although I was hesitant, I thought, ‘Well, it’s been a long
time, I’ll probably be OK.’ And I sat there as he shot the silhouette,
but he had to stop because I started frantically crying. It was
completely uncontrollable.”

There was also
a statement by a parent, Francis Stile, whose two daughters attended
the school. He recalled “the phone call from the neighbor who said there
had been a shooting at Cleveland, the frustration of not being able to
get near the school because the incident was still going on, the terror
in my wife’s eyes, her screams of anguish at not knowing whether our
girls were involved, the phone call from the hospital telling us that
one of them had been wounded, looking at the bullet hole in her right
elbow and the bullet burns on the inside if each thigh where a bullet
had passed between her legs.”

The other daughter had been saved from harm
when a notebook with a pouch of pens stopped a bullet. Both girls had
witnessed the death of the principal and the custodian.

“They still speak of hearing the gurgle in Mr. Wragg as he lay there
dying… If such evil can occur in such a benign and tranquil setting,
then it can happen anywhere and probably will.”

A former student named Cam Miller attended the hearing in person and offered the last statement.

“I was 9 years old when I was shot,” he began.

He
recalled that his mother had just dropped him at school directly
opposite Spencer’s home and he had been starting up the sidewalk when he
saw the bodies of the principal and the custodian. He had then blacked
out as a bullet passed within an inch of his heart, exiting his chest.
He survived but remained terrorized.

“I
would have to call to my mother two or three times each night to walk me
around the inside of my house, just so I knew that Brenda Spencer was
not inside my house,” he recalled.

He had been called to testify against her.

“I
walked into court and saw this monster glaring at me,” he remembered.
“The look at Brenda Foster gave me was enough to scare any young child
to death.”

Thirty years later, Miller
beheld her in another proceeding and asked the board not to parole her.
The board denied her and she will not be eligible for another hearing
until 2019.

In the meantime, she will sit
as inmate W14944 in the California Women’s Institution, seeming to see
no irony in having used heated metal to brand the words “Courage” and
“Pride” across her chest.

In 2009, the board again refused her application for parole, and ruled it would be 10 years before she would be considered again

As of December 2016 she remains in prison and is housed at the California Institution for Women in Chino, California.

Wednesday, 25 January 2017

Thought for the day: "I thought I would go for broke - I have mainly managed that …."

Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen Hapus... Happy St Dwynwen's Day!

St Dwynwen's Day is considered to be the Welsh equivalent to Valentine's Day and is celebrated on 25 January every year. It celebrates Dwynwen: the Welsh saint of lovers.

In the 5th Century Dwynwen fell in love with Maelon Dafodrill. Maelon
returned her feelings but for an undetermined reason, they could not be
together. Three hypotheses are that a) Maelon raped Dwynwen despite her
wish to remain celibate until after marriage, b) her father forbade the
marriage, or c) her father had already promised her to someone else.
Dwynwen, distraught by her love for Maelon, prays to fall out of love
with him.

After falling asleep, or possibly while still awake in a woods she
had run to in her distress, Dwynwen was visited by an angel, who
appeared carrying a sweet potion designed to erase all memory of Maelon
and turn him into a block of ice. God then gave three wishes to Dwynwen.
First she wished that Maelon be thawed, second that God meet the hopes
and dreams of true lovers and third that she should never marry. All
three were fulfilled, and as a mark of her thanks, Dwynwen devoted
herself to God's service for the rest of her life
Dwynwen became a nun, fulfilling her wish to never marry. She left for the island of Anglesey
and built a Church, which became known as Llanddwyn, literally meaning
"Church of Dwynwen". Its remains can still be seen today on the island of Llanddwyn, off the coast of Anglesey.
The smaller island also contains Dwynwen's well, where, allegedly, a
sacred fish swims, whose movements predict the future fortunes and
relationships of various couples.

Another tradition claims that if the
water boils while visitors are present, then love and good luck will
surely follow

Children's Version
This version of the story is generally told to younger children,
usually in primary school or nursery as it is generally considered the
most appropriate for children.

Dwynwen was the beautiful daughter of Brychan Brycheiniog,
who was said to have had eleven sons and twenty-four daughters
(although these figures vary greatly, to the extent of suggesting he had
over fifty children). She met and fell madly in love with a man called
Maelon, and he reciprocated her feelings. She asked her father if she
could marry Maelon but Brychan disliked Maelon and refused to give his
permission. Maelon begged, as did Dwynwen, but Brychan would not relent
and Maelon was forced to leave.
Dwynwen was so upset that she ran into
the forest. There, she met an angel in a dream who granted her the
position of the Saint of Love

Tuesday, 24 January 2017

When a pair of doves started mating on my mother's balcony - we were interested, and watched in fascination - mainly because at first they decided that the unstable top of the open window would be a good place for a nest - not a good idea really. Then in mid winter - they seemed to be at it again... What a silly time to start raising a family !

And the nest did not really look as though it had any expertise. A couple of twigs laid out - with no style at all. But they seemed to manage and in due time two eggs appeared and a dove was incubating night and day - or so it seemed ..

Then the babies grew - but did not seem to want to disperse much... and they got to be a bit of a size.

But in due time they flew - but came back on a regular basis.

And the parents started again - and this time a bit of research shows that it is the male that does most of the nest making and incubates during the day.... And today the young birds were sitting watching and one seems to have a few twigs in his mouth as thought he wants to help...

Well - we can't see how many eggs are there - but we are watching for another brood...

So - the wiki says...

Collared doves typically breed close to human habitation wherever
food resources are abundant and there are trees for nesting; almost all
nests are within half a mile of inhabited buildings. The female lays
two white eggs
in a stick nest, which she incubates during the night and which the
male incubates during the day. Incubation lasts between 14 and 18 days,
with the young fledging
after 15 to 19 days.

Breeding occurs throughout the year when abundant
food is available, though only rarely in winter in areas with cold
winters such as northeastern Europe. Three to four broods per year is
common, although up to six broods in a year has been recorded. Eurasian Collared Doves are a monogamous species, and share parental duties when caring for young.

The male's mating display is a ritual flight, which, as with many
other pigeons, consists of a rapid, near-vertical climb to height
followed by a long glide downward in a circle, with the wings held below
the body in an inverted "V" shape. At all other times, flight is
typically direct using fast and clipped wing beats and without use of
gliding.

The collared dove is not wary and often feeds very close to human
habitation, including visiting bird tables; the largest populations are
typically found around farms where spilt grain is frequent around grain
stores or where livestock are fed. It is a gregarious species and
sizeable winter flocks will form where there are food supplies such as
grain (its main food) as well as seeds, shoots and insects. Flocks most
commonly number between ten and fifty, but flocks of up to ten thousand
have been recorded.

The song is a coo-COO-coo. The collared dove also makes a
harsh loud screeching call lasting about two seconds, particularly in
flight just before landing. A rough way to describe the screeching sound
is a hah-hah.

Collared doves cooing in early spring are sometimes mistakenly reported as the calls of early-arriving cuckoos and, as such, a mistaken sign of spring's return.

The collared dove is not migratory,
but is strongly dispersive.

Over the last century, it has been one of
the great colonisers of the bird world. Its original range at the end of
the 19th century was warm temperate and subtropical Asia from Turkey
east to southern China and south through India to Sri Lanka.

In 1838 it
was reported in Bulgaria, but not until the 20th century did it expand
across Europe, appearing in parts of the Balkans
between 1900–1920, and then spreading rapidly northwest, reaching
Germany in 1945, Great Britain by 1953 (breeding for the first time in
1956), Ireland in 1959, and the Faroe Islands in the early 1970s.

Subsequent spread was 'sideways' from this fast northwest spread, reaching northeast to north of the Arctic Circle in Norway and east to the Ural Mountains in Russia, and southwest to the Canary Islands
and northern Africa from Morocco to Egypt, by the end of the 20th
century. In the east of its range, it has also spread northeast to most
of central and northern China, and locally (probably introduced) in
Japan.It has also reached Iceland as a vagrant (41 records up to 2006), but has not colonised successfully there.

So - it seems that these birds have only been in the country for 60 years - but seem to be doing well...

We will watch with interest..
I lift my glass to winter birds!!
Cheers

Saturday, 21 January 2017

Thought for the day:"My pet mouse Elvis died last night - He was caught in a trap."

Order of Athelstan today - and installation so I will have little time - but I will share the sentiments here as once again they sum up a set of maxims that seem worthy to me...

Our Ancient Charges, having subsisted since time immemorial, form the basis for our conduct as members of this Order. Still, as Freemasons there are other excellencies of character to which our attention must also be forcefully directed.

Let us never fail to:

Quietly and modestly move in the sphere of
life; without blemish,
Fulfil our duties as men, and as loyal subjects.Be pious without hypocrisy, benevolent without ostentation, and aid our
fellow man without self-interest.
Let our heart beat warm for friendship, be serene and full of enjoyment.
In adversity do not despair, in fortune avoid presumption. Be resolute in the
hour of danger.
Free ourselves from superstition and infidelity; and joyfully acknowledge the
hand of the Eternal Master in all Nature.
Be careful to feel and adore the higher destination of Men, and to preserve
our Faith, our Hope, and our Charity as not mere words without any meaning.
Remember our property, even life itself, is not too dear for the protection
of true innocents, the virtuous, our society and the defence of truth.
If you wish severity, then judge yourself first. Range yourself against
lawless violence.
Be tolerant with the debilities of your neighbour; oppose error with firmness
but without arrogance.
Promote intelligence and aid learning without impatience for others.
Work diligently.
Honour Virtue, though it may be in the most humble garment. Do not favour
Vice, though it may be clad in the finest purple;
Administer Justice to Merit whether it should dwell in the highest palace or
in the lowest cottage.

Do not proclaim what you have done, can do, or will do, but where need is, to
the best of your ability, lay hold with dispassionate courage, circumspect
resolution, indefatigable exertion and the rarest power of mind, and pledge
yourself not cease until the work is accomplished. Then, without pretension,
retire into the multitude because the good act is done - not for
acknowledgement, fame or fortune, but for the cause of the good itself, to the
glory of God.
Once more into the breach my friends...

About Me

From the frozen wastes of Northern Norsca, Vollsanger was a Skald of the old tradition - a Bard who was well schooled in the ancient songs and epic tales.

Coming out of the Skadi Mountains one day - he found the Crimson Moon Tavern in a glade with many strange people who had travelled great distances to meet up. The War Host!

Selling a song for a copper - writing songs on demand and entertaining the peoples of the factions. Vollsanger faces new challenges... LARP Awards Bard of the Year 2018. LARP & Re-enactment Skald.Guest Bard at the Conquest of Mythodea in Germany